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Note: I mentioned family Spiritual practices. Both Justin Whitmel Earley and Wendy M. Wright have been helpful to me.

Brian Godawa has been a professional writer and filmmaker for over 20 years. His creative versatility was born of a passion for both intellect and imagination, both left-brain and right-brain. The result: Brian is an artisan of word, image, and story that engages heart, mind, and soul. Just think, “Renaissance Man.”

Bestselling Author. But Brian is also an author and international speaker on art, movies, worldviews, and faith. His popular book,Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment, is used as a textbook in schools around the country. He is a contributing scholarly writer to various journals and professional orgs, and his articles on movies and philosophy have been published around the world. His Chronicles series of novels are his most important contribution by incarnating his worldview and theology in narrative unlike anything you’ve read before.

Hollywood Filmmaker. As an award-winning screenwriter, his first feature film was To End All Wars, starring Kiefer Sutherland. But his skills and experience quickly expanded to include writing and directing feature films, documentaries and video promotionals.

When he isn’t reading, watching movies, or loving on his wife, he is reading, watching movies, or loving on his wife. He knows, he knows: He should get out more.

https://godawa.com/

Amazon.co.uk: Brian Godawa: books, biography, latest update

Brian Godawa (@BrianGodawa) / X

The Reverend, David William Brown FRSE FBA (born 1 July 1948) is an Anglican priest and British scholar of philosophy, theology, religion, and the arts.

He taught at the universities of Oxford, Durham, and St. Andrews before retiring in 2015. He is well-known for his "non-punitive theory of purgatory, his defence of specific versions of social Trinitarianism and kenotic Christology, his distinctive theory of divine revelation as mediated fallibly through both tradition and imagination, and his proposals regarding a pervasive sacramentality discerned in nature and human culture alike."

Videos and Websites for more of David:

David Brown (theologian - Wikipedia

David Brown - Arts and Religious Belief (youtube.com)

AT THE THRESHOLD: The Greater Part / David Brown (youtube.com)

Research Areas

An earlier interest in interactions between theology and philosophy has now broadened out into one between theology and the wider culture, especially the arts. In my earlier career at Oxford (1976-90), I focused on the relationship with philosophy and this is reflected in my two major books from that period: The Divine Trinity (1985) and Continental Philosophy and Modern Theology (1987). However, thereafter with my appointment first to Durham in 1990 and subsequently to St Andrews in 2007 my interests widened to consideration of theology's relationship with the arts and culture more generally.

That interest is reflected in five books all published by Oxford University Press between 1999 and 2008. In the first two Tradition and Imagination (1999) and Discipleship and Imagination (2000) I explored the way in which the Christian understanding of biblical revelation has been affected by changes in the wider culture and in turn affected that wider culture. The history of art can provide some good examples, for instance in differing treatments across the centuries of the nativity or crucifixion of Christ. The later three then looked at religious experience and the way in which this might be mediated through the arts and culture. God and Enchantment of Place (2004) explored this primarily through landscape painting, geography and architecture, as well as, more briefly, in other neglected areas such as changing attitudes to garden design. God and Grace of Body (2007) examined attitudes to the body as well as music in all its forms (including pop music). Finally, God and Mystery in Words (2008) explored religious experience as mediated through drama and poetry and their expression in worship as liturgy and hymns.

However. a book published initially in French in 2010 La tradition kénotique dans la théologie britannique represented a return to more doctrinal and philosophical issues. An English version becomes available from Baylor University Press in 2011 under the title, Divine Humanity: Kenosis and the Construction of a Christian Theology.

Arthur Versluis, Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University, holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has published numerous books and articles.

Among his many books are Platonic Mysticism (SUNY Press 2017), American Gurus (Oxford UP, 2014), Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Rowman Littlefield, 2007), The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006), Restoring Paradise: Esoteric Transmission through Literature and Art (SUNY: 2004); The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (Oxford UP: 2001); Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology, (Paragon House, 2000); Island Farm (MSU Press, 2000); Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (SUNY: 1999); and American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (Oxford UP, 1993).

His family has owned a commercial farm in West Michigan for several generations, and so he also published a book called Island Farm about the family farm, and about family farming in the modern era.

Versluis was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to Germany and is the editor of JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism. He is the founding president of Hieros, a 501c3 nonprofit focused on spirituality and cultural renewal.

For more, please see:

https://arthurversluis.com/

Naghmeh Panahi was born into a Muslim family in Iran. From the age of two, Naghmeh witnessed a country at war. In 1979, Iran underwent an Islamic Revolution and then entered an 8-year war with Iraq which heavily involved the city of Tehran where Naghmeh grew up. Bombings and missiles were a daily occurrence. Walking to school meant walking through the rubble of friends’ homes and entering a classroom of missing friends and painful memories.

Eventually chemical warfare was used, and unimaginable side effects plagued the country. At an early age the horrors of war caused Naghmeh to seek God for answers about why he would allow such suffering. Naghmeh and her twin brother became steadfast in their pursuit of God. As Muslims they read the Quran, performed Islamic prayers, and fasted.

Eventually, recruiters from the Iranian military began entering elementary schools and encouraging boys to enlist in the military, saying that if they died they would go to heaven because this was a holy war. The young boys were sent to the front lines to run through land mines so that the trained soldiers could safely follow after them. If parents objected to their children enlisting, they would be taken by the police and imprisoned for speaking against the government. With a young son in jeopardy, Naghmeh’s family knew they must leave Iran.

At the age of 9, Naghmeh and her family moved to San Jose, California. Within weeks of their arrival, Naghmeh and her twin brother discovered the God they had been looking for, Jesus Christ. They learned that through the death of Jesus Christ their sins were forgiven. They learned that they did not have to die in a holy war or do religious work in order to reach God, but instead God came in human flesh through the person of Jesus Christ. Most importantly they learned that Jesus loved them. Naghmeh and her twin brother became dedicated followers of Christ at the age of 9.

Naghmeh’s parents were furious when they found out that she had become a Christian and considered moving the family back to Iran. Instead of moving, Naghmeh’s family was persuaded to move closer to family in Boise, ID where they hoped the seclusion of the area would provoke their children to return to Islam. Eventually their hearts softened after secretly reading a Bible they had taken from Naghmeh seven years earlier. They too became followers of Christ.

https://www.tahriralnisa.org/

Naghmeh’s hope was to be a missionary medical doctor in a third world country, so she became a pre-med student at the University of Puget Sound. Soon after September 11th, 2001 Naghmeh returned to Iran, this time as a Christian.

This is when Naghmeh experienced the plight of Christians and religious minorities in Iran and also gained first-hand experience of the oppression and violence women are subjected to everyday in the Middle East. Her own life was in constant danger as a Christian convert from Islam. She was arrested by the Iranian revolutionary guards multiple times, and with guns pointed at her head was told to renounce her Christian faith or she would be raped and killed. She lived in constant fear of associating with other Christians because many times the house churches were raided, and her friends and fellow Christians were arrested and imprisoned.

In 2002 Naghmeh met Saeed Abedini and helped start one of the largest house church movements in Iran. In 2004 she married Saeed, and by 2005 the house churches had grown to over 2,000 members in over 30 cities. As the house churches grew so did the persecution. Due to increased persecution and arrests Naghmeh and Saeed left Iran and returned to America where Naghmeh raised her two children Rebekka and Jacob in Idaho. In 2012, her husband, Saeed Abedini, was arrested while visiting Iran. Through God’s grace Naghmeh was able to bring world-wide attention not only to Saeed’s imprisonment in Iran, but also to the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide.

Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the the Word on Fire Institute and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies.

Her book Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire Academic, 2021) received the 2022 Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies.

Her newest book is Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography, which wad released in time for the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death on September 2nd, 2023. For more details and video interviews, see the publisher’s page for the book; you can also buy it on Amazon US & Blackwell’s Books in the UK as well as on Amazon UK.

https://hollyordway.com/

"The Tammy Peterson Podcast" delves into issues such as faith through a counter-cultural lens. Behind the podcast stands a 62-year-old cancer survivor and wife of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who has just begun the journey to become a member of the Catholic Church.

Tammy and I spoke about this journey, beginning with her upbringing in Canada, before looking at the Peterson's love story, some struggles the family have faced, the blessings they have received in marriage and as parents, a modern miracle, femininity vs feminism, the role of the body in the Christian way, a new life of prayer, and more.

Please, check out Tammy's podcast, here:

https://www.youtube.com/@Tammy-Peterson

You can read more about Adam and engage with his work here:

https://www.adambcoleman.com/about

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Victim-Victor-Identifying-ideologies/dp/B0915JT4XD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1U7TUDE5H6FMS&keywords=black+victim+to+black+victor&qid=1703286536&sprefix=black+victim+to+black+victo%2Caps%2C532&sr=8-1

Jason M. Baxter is a college professor, speaker, and author of five books, including The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis and A Beginner's Guide to Dante's "Comedy". He currently teaches Great Books at Notre Dame and is a curricular consultant for St. Thomas More Academy in South Bend, Indiana.

For more, please see:

Jason M. Baxter (jasonmbaxter.com)

Amazon.co.uk: Jason M. Baxter: books, biography, latest update

Jason Baxter, Author at The Imaginative Conservative

Jason M. Baxter – Catholic World Report

Oppenheimer’s Tragic Fate | Jason M. Baxter | First Things